


The Private and Intimate Life of the House

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Anxiety, Bed-Wetting, Both of them suffer in this tbh, Child Abuse, Eli Vanto Needs a Hug, Eli Vanto's parents suck, Emotional Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Violence, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Meet the Parents Gone Wrong, No Incest, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Situational Humiliation, Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo Needs a Hug, Xenophobia, adult survivor of child abuse, this is objectively the weirdest thing i've written but i'm still proud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:42:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27653600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Eli invites Thrawn to visit Lysatra on leave. It doesn't go well...for either of them.
Relationships: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Eli Vanto
Kudos: 21
Collections: Anonymous





	The Private and Intimate Life of the House

**Author's Note:**

> It'll probably really help if you read "The Same Old Bitter Things" first!! This is a stand-alone story but it borrows HEAVILY from consideritalljoy's ideas and plot development and it might help to read that first and get some context for the way Eli's parents treat him and how they extend their bigotry and abuse toward Thrawn. Plus, it's just a really good story!!
> 
> For context, the short version is that Eli's parents abused him as a child but he hasn't fully come to terms with it as abuse. He invites Thrawn to stay with him on leave and Thrawn agrees, thinking Eli could probably use some support. They share Eli's childhood room, with Eli sleeping on the floor and Thrawn in the bed, an arrangement Eli's parents don't approve of.
> 
> Enjoy!!

If the mood at breakfast seemed subtly off that day, Eli endeavored not to notice it. Conversation limped along the way it always did, with him and his mother carrying the effort. His father’s input was minimal. Thrawn paid close attention, as he always did—in fact, he spent more time looking at Eli and Mrs. Vanto than at his own plate—but kept silent, asking no questions and offering no conversation of his own.

Still, Eli’s eyes kept flickering toward his father. Mr. Vanto seemed to be brooding over something—or, no, that wasn’t entirely accurate. It was more like he was sitting on an insult, just waiting for the right person to provoke him so he could bring it out. It made Eli intensely uncomfortable; he’d seen the same look enough times as a child to tense up automatically at the sight of it, but he wasn’t sure he’d _ever_ seen it so early in the day. At the end of a long shift with the company, sure. But at breakfast?

Someone must have called him into the warehouse late at night, Eli decided. He’d just managed to put it out of his mind when his small talk with Mrs. Vanto came to a natural end and invited silence into the room. Eli speared a forkful of eggs into his mouth and was looking down at his plate when he heard his father push his own plate away and clear his throat.

“Eli,” Mr. Vanto said.

Eli looked up, pausing mid-chew. His father’s expression was difficult to read, but didn’t seem to offer any sort of good news. He looked almost—but not _exactly_ —like a man forcing himself to say something awkward and embarrassing. It was the ‘not exactly’ part that put Eli on edge.

“Yeah?” he said when his dad didn’t go on.

Mr. Vanto sighed. “Eli,” he said again, “I’m sorry to bring this up at the breakfast table, but I think we’d better address it now before everyone starts their day.”

Eli nodded, already flushing from apprehension. His mind raced over the dozens of things he could have done to piss his father off, but it was impossible to match his mild offenses to the cold look on his father’s face. Across the table, Mr. Vanto’s eyes flickered toward Thrawn, then back to Eli, and he stared steadily at his son through the rest of the talk as if Thrawn didn’t exist.

“If your alien isn’t potty-trained, I don’t want him sleeping in your bed,” he said flatly.

Eli’s brain stopped working at once as silence descended on the dining room; the words coming out of his father’s mouth were so absurd that he couldn’t really process them. It must be a joke, he thought, but Mr. Vanto’s tone screamed seriousness. He glanced at Thrawn, only vaguely catching his father’s next statement.

“It’s nothing personal, Eli, it’s just a big pain to clean the bedding and mattress. I found the sheets in the washer this morning and no offense, but the scent of urine was still _really_ strong, even after a few washes—I don’t know, maybe the difference between human and alien hormones, or…it doesn’t matter. We can get him some older blankets and he can sleep on the floor, but I just don’t want him in your bed anymore. Understand?”

The speech washed over the table in silence. Eli said nothing, the topic in general (and his father’s unnecessary and probably untrue comment on the strong scent in particular) making his ears burn. He was staring without comprehension at Thrawn, who avoided his eyes. The subtle signs of embarrassment on Thrawn’s face were painfully clear to Eli, if only because he’d never seen even a hint of embarrassment there before. Thrawn picked at his food, which he’d barely touched all through breakfast and seemed even less inclined to touch now.

There had to be some sort of misunderstanding here. Ignoring his father, Eli fought through his own confusion and said to Thrawn as delicately as he could, “Did you wet the bed?”

He was certain the answer to this question would be no, and he meant it only as a prompt so either Thrawn or his father could explain what was going on. But Thrawn paused, pursed his lips, and gave Eli a brief nod.

Eli stifled his next question, which was the entirely useless, “You _did_?” A question like that would only exacerbate the situation’s awkwardness and make things worse for Thrawn, he suspected. Eli shifted in his seat, struggling to process the fact that _Thrawn_ of all people had wet the bed (But _how?_ He didn’t seem sick…), and then looked at his father. A new kind of embarrassment—the shame of being related to a bad host, someone who didn’t have the innate decency not to humiliate a guest at breakfast—filled him at once.

“There’s no need to make him sleep on the _floor_ , Dad,” he said, mixing indignation with a carefully-manufactured joviality he didn’t really feel. “It was just an accident. It won’t happen again."

Mr. Vanto raised an arch eyebrow and stared down his nose at Eli. “You’re certain about that?” he asked, his voice cool. The feigned joviality had no effect on him; if anything, it seemed to make his tone more serious, almost dangerous. Before Eli could answer, Mr. Vanto added, “You’re certain it was an accident?”

The question was so bizarre that it stole Eli’s confidence away. He glanced again at Thrawn, painfully guilty that this conversation was happening at all, much less in front of him. “Of course it was an accident,” he said. Then, his face warming from second-hand embarrassment, “He was _asleep_ , Dad. He couldn’t…”

Mr. Vanto looked so unimpressed that Eli couldn’t help but trail off.

“I mean, nobody _deliberately—_ ” he tried again.

“But _was_ he asleep, Eli?” asked Mr. Vanto, his voice maddeningly calm. He was still excluding Thrawn from the conversation, as if he wasn’t capable of speech. It was obvious he was getting at something specific—obvious that he thought he knew more than Eli (and apparently he did, since he was the one who found the soiled bedding in the washer)—so Eli looked to Thrawn, some of his uncertainty leaking through.

“You were asleep, right?” he asked, praying that Thrawn would say yes.

There was a long moment of hesitation. Thrawn’s face was closed off and cold, but there was a slight hunch to his shoulders that Eli’s parents probably wouldn’t even notice, since they hadn’t known him as long. He seemed to force himself to meet Eli’s eyes.

“No,” he said softly, tonelessly. Eli realized Thrawn’s eyes weren’t actually meeting his own at all; they were focused on a spot on Eli’s cheek, allowing him to look Eli’s way without fully making eye contact. “I was awake.”

Eli waited for an explanation, certain even despite Thrawn’s words and his father’s attitude that there must be a good reason for this. But nothing more came, and after a while, Mr. Vanto cleared his throat and took over the conversation again. 

“I’ll get the old blankets out of storage and pick up a plastic sheet for him to sleep on,” he said firmly. “Accident or _not_ , if he does it again, at least it’ll be on something we can just throw away.”

Eli glanced at Thrawn again, but this time, Thrawn avoided his eyes entirely. His mother, when he looked to her instead, just gave him an insincere look of sympathy but said nothing, neither intervening with her husband’s bullying nor reaching out to comfort or distract her guest. With a flare of temper, Eli turned to his father again.

“It’s my bed, Dad,” he said, matching Mr. Vanto’s firm tone. “And Thrawn’s my guest.” Turning to Thrawn, who still pretended not to hear him, he said, “I’m not going to make you sleep on the floor or with a plastic sheet.”

He watched his father’s eyes go flat, but Mr. Vanto didn’t argue with him. For the next minute, Eli stared at his plate, fuming with anger and seeing nothing as he chased food around with his fork. He couldn’t seem to let the topic go even in his own head, and beside him Thrawn was sitting as still as a statue with the same sightless stare.

It just didn’t make any sense to Eli. Thrawn was a grown man—a highly competent, highly intelligent grown man—who’d never wet the bed once when they were at Royal Imperial. Nor had he ever indicated that he might have issues with it in the past. Eli knew it didn’t necessarily matter; accidents could happen regardless of age. But he’d always believed those accidents were caused by stress, and he could think of few things less stressful than being on shore leave with a friend and his parents. Even if his parents were grating, they were far less stressful than going into battle or surviving a firefight, and he knew Thrawn had done both those things without incident.

Besides, to wet the bed by accident, one needed to be asleep, and Thrawn had already confirmed he wasn’t. Try as he might, Eli couldn’t think of any conceivable reason why Thrawn would deliberately and consciously wet the bed. Other people, sure, but not Thrawn. He pushed back from the table with a shake of his head, not bothering to excuse himself, and took his plate to the sink.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said—to Thrawn, not his parents. “Gimme your plate and we can both go.”

For a moment, he thought Thrawn wasn’t willing. He stayed where he was, not even twitching to indicate he’d heard. But then he grabbed his plate, his face expressionless, and scraped the uneaten food into the compost bin. He stood next to Eli as Eli rinsed both plates clean, and the whole time Thrawn stared silently out the kitchen window, his eyes hard and cold.

It was incomprehensible, Eli decided. He put the plates away in a hurry, his thoughts racing, and led Thrawn out of the house without another word to his parents. The fall air was crisp but not unpleasant, bringing a sting of blood to Eli’s cheeks, and for a long time they walked in silence. It gave Eli time to organize his thoughts and calm down a little, and gave _Thrawn_ time to loosen up somewhat; gradually, he lost the tension that came with embarrassment and which had been hovering over him all day.

The Vanto family home was long out of sight when Eli broke the silence.

“What happened?” he asked.

The silence endured another few steps. Thrawn’s hands were in his pockets for warmth, his back straight and his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

“It was as your father said,” he said flatly. 

“You wet the bed while you were awake?” Eli asked. There was a not-so-subtle note of a challenge in his voice, and he could tell Thrawn recognized it. 

“Yes,” said Thrawn. After a beat of hesitation, he added, “It was not deliberate.”

They walked in silence for a while after that as Eli digested Thrawn’s words, trying to figure out how he could be awake and make the decision to wet the bed without it being deliberate. Had he needed the restroom but not wanted to wake Eli up by exiting to the hall? Had he forgotten where the fresher was, or perhaps seen that someone was already inside it and settled down to wait? In a way, Eli supposed that might explain how his father had known Thrawn was awake; he could have been the person inside the fresher, and might have passed Thrawn afterward on his way to the laundry room.

But it didn’t feel right to Eli. Nothing about it seemed right at all.

“I just don’t understand,” he said finally. “Why didn’t you use the fresher if you had to go?”

He glanced at Thrawn and waited for an answer, but Thrawn didn’t return his gaze. His face was unreadable.

“Did you forget where it was?” asked Eli, mystified. Another beat of silence greeted him. “I’m not trying to be mean, I just—”

“I know,” Thrawn said. “And no, I didn’t forget.”

His tone was opaque. 

“Have you ever…” Eli hesitated, his eyes sliding closed. “Just tell me to shut up if you don’t wanna talk about it, okay?”

Thrawn said nothing. After giving him a moment to protest, Eli nodded and turned away.

“Have you ever done that before?” he asked. There was a slight pause.

“I was under the impression it was common for humans to…if not frequently, then at least occasionally do the same thing,” Thrawn said haltingly. It wasn’t really an answer to Eli’s question, but he let it go for the moment.

“It is. Especially with kids, but probably every adult does it at least once in their life.” He snuck a sideways glance at Thrawn. “Chiss, too?”

Thrawn only nodded.

“Did you have too much to drink before bed?” Eli asked tentatively.

“No,” said Thrawn.

“You didn’t take any sleeping aids, did you? Or muscle relaxers? I know it’s been tense here—and you were out like a light when I came in—”

“No,” said Thrawn again, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. Eli cast about for another explanation. 

“And it wasn’t on purpose?”

Thrawn stopped suddenly, turning on his heel to face Eli. His hands were still in his pockets and his face still blank, but Eli took an automatic step back, as if Thrawn was looming over him. 

“Eli?” he said.

Eli swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “Yeah?”

He felt entirely certain Thrawn was going to take him up on his earlier offer and tell him to shut up. Instead, Thrawn studied his face intensely, his eyes as hard and cold as they’d been in the kitchen. Eli held his breath and couldn’t force himself to relax, even when Thrawn stepped back, his shoulders sagging slightly as though in exhaustion.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” he said bluntly. Eli said nothing for a moment, but when Thrawn didn’t say anything either, he decided to prompt him, his voice full of caution.

“No?” he said. Thrawn shook his head. “I thought you were asleep when I came in…”

Thrawn’s lips were a thin line, his face dark. “It didn’t last. Your…” He hesitated, his eyes shifting to Eli’s face and then away again. It took him a long moment to speak again. “Did you know,” he said grimly, “that your parents sometimes come into your room while you’re sleeping?”

Eli didn’t answer right away. He felt a sudden hot flush of sweat prickling his skin. “Sure,” he said, a little wildly. His heart was pounding in his ears as ghoulish explanations for Thrawn’s behavior—and his father’s—came to mind. He refused to consider them. “They’ve woken me up a few times, just checking on me.”

Thrawn nodded almost absently, his eyes drifting away but narrowing at the same time. “You woke up last night,” he continued. “When the door closed. Do you remember?”

After a moment, Eli did, the memory coming back to him. He stared at Thrawn with new eyes, remembering how he’d been curled on his side with his back to Eli, his hands clasped together over the back of his head, his arms covering his face. He remembered how Thrawn had told him, evenly but with a rough voice, to go back to sleep. 

“You’re saying…?” he started, then shook his head. “What are you saying?”

Thrawn met his eyes for what felt like the first time in ages. His lips were tight; he seemed a little pale. “I’m not sure _what_ I’m saying,” he said, and to Eli’s shock, his voice was the same disconcerting rough/even mix from the night before. “I am not sure … how much I _should_ say. I think perhaps we should…”

He hesitated, searching Eli’s face. Eli widened his eyes in an attempt to seem unbothered, giving nothing away but silently urging Thrawn to finish. It had the opposite effect; Thrawn balked, averting his gaze entirely, and became closed-off again almost at once.

“I think perhaps we should forget it happened,” he said instead. Somehow, Eli knew it wasn’t what he’d originally set out to say. He stared at Thrawn silently, a cold wave rushing over him. He’d let his own anxieties get the better of him, he realized, and as a result he’d lost any chance of Thrawn confiding in him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, forcing himself to remember a million things he’d seen and let slide during their stay—the little slights and constant condescension, the way his parents had striven at every turn to make Thrawn feel uncomfortable or worse.

 _The laws out here aren’t kind to aliens,_ his father had said. 

Eli let his breath out in a long sigh. He turned to Thrawn, who stirred but didn’t move away, allowing Eli to step closer to him. 

“What did my dad do to you?” he asked. 

Thrawn’s eyes sharpened. He studied Eli’s face again, perhaps checking for signs of sincerity. “You do not fully realize the severity of your father’s actions,” he said. “Not just this week. His behavior in general.”

Eli’s lips thinned. “Okay,” he said. “So tell me how it really is. I won’t get mad.”

“I do not believe you are capable of making a guarantee,” Thrawn said.

Eli touched his arm, not really grabbing it, but closing his fingers lightly around Thrawn’s sleeve. “I won’t get mad at _you_ ,” he said. His voice was gentle but firm, and he surprised even himself with the raw sincerity in his voice, the sudden surge of fierce loyalty that went through him. He watched Thrawn’s face carefully but saw no sign that this comforted him.

“Eli,” he said patiently, “why did you invite me here?”

“Because you…” Eli blinked rapidly, his own motives swirling in his head in a confused jumble. “You won’t like the answer, Thrawn.”

“I already know,” said Thrawn. “I want _you_ to know. Tell me.”

His tone was a perfect storm of condescension and bossiness, and Eli felt his temper spiking despite himself. His tongue loosened as a result, as Thrawn had no doubt intended. “Because you’re all alone,” he said. “You’ve got no friends. No one to visit. I thought you might like—”

“No,” said Thrawn, his voice calm and even and sure. “You invited me for selfish reasons, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of, Eli, but you’re obfuscating your own motivations. You invited me for support—and subconsciously, you invited me to give your parents another target for their ill will.”

Eli opened his mouth to protest, but Thrawn was already plowing on.

“A wise tactical decision, and one I can’t fault you for making,” he said. “When overwhelmed and fatigued in battle, one has two potential choices besides retreat. You can find a powerful ally and together overcome the enemy—or you can present your enemy with a more appealing target, and thus allow yourself the time to recover your losses and either escape or gather your forces for a renewed attack. Do you understand?”

Eli’s mouth was dry and he found himself shaking his head. “I don’t—my parents—” He stopped and shook his head again, painfully aware that Thrawn was studying him. “It’s not like that, Thrawn. It’s different.”

“How so?” said Thrawn, his eyes narrow.

“When my parents sneak into my room, they don’t—” Eli bit his lip. Thrawn’s face gave him no hints as to what might have happened, and the options running through his mind were too horrible to consider. “They just check on me, that’s all,” he finished lamely, staring at his feet. “They don’t…frighten me.”

“Is their uninvited presence in your room not uncomfortable for you?” Thrawn challenged.

“Is that what made you wet the bed?” Eli shot back. “A little discomfort? My dad just _being_ in the room?”

There was a brief pause just long enough for Eli to regret both his words and his tone, but before he could even begin to form an apology, Thrawn inclined his head.

“A valid point, Eli. No, that is not what made me lose control.” 

He paused again, glancing over the countryside as he gathered his thoughts. His face was hard, without a trace of embarrassment, and he’d clasped his hands behind his back the same way he often did on the bridge. Eli couldn’t help but feel like whatever Thrawn said next would be less of an emotional confession and more of a tactical decision. 

“I remembered what your father said about Lysatran law,” said Thrawn, his voice unreadable. “His words were supported by my own research. Although he didn’t state it, I had another factor to take into consideration—your reaction should I hurt your father would not be ideal, and even if you found recourse to forgive me for acting in self-defense, your relationship with your father would be permanently damaged, a consequence which…” He hesitated, eyes flickering. “...should mean less to me than the legal impact on my career and mission.”

A weight settled on Eli’s chest. He said nothing, letting Thrawn speak.

“What your father did…” Thrawn started again, his voice quieter now, “...was nothing I haven’t experienced before. But it was unique in that never before had my ability to defend myself been so thoroughly removed. I was not bound or drugged or injured, but even so, to fight back would have been…” He shrugged heavily, signs of strain starting to show on his face. “...in every way a tactical defeat.”

His eyes shifted toward Eli. His lips turned downward; he seemed almost to be pleading with Eli to understand.

“Fight or flight,” Eli said for him, feeling hollow. 

Thrawn looked away again. “Yes.”

“You couldn’t help it.”

A pause. An inclination of the head. “Yes,” said Thrawn again. “I know.”

When Eli stepped closer to him, he saw that Thrawn’s hard mask had cracked, a warm flush burning in his cheeks. He touched Thrawn’s sleeve again, his own skin feeling like it might be on fire, but from an entirely different kind of shame.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said lowly. He didn’t need to say whose fault it really was; they both knew. “And I don’t think less of you because of it. I hope you know that.”

Thrawn said nothing, but the heat in his face seemed to cool a little, leaving him looking subtly worn out. And why shouldn’t he be worn out, after what he’d gone through? He studied Thrawn’s face, and the longer he studied it, the more he found to admire—not the way he’d admired handsome men and beautiful women in the past, but in an entirely new way he’d never experienced before. Each line etched on Thrawn’s face screamed a different kind of confidence and strength, spoke to years of experience Eli would never be able to match and might never fully know. 

He let go of Thrawn’s sleeve, letting their hands brush for just a moment. A sigh escaped him, long and slow.

“I think more of you now,” he admitted, as odd as it felt to say. He could feel Thrawn’s eyes shifted toward him, scanning his face. “You can tell I’m being honest, right? That I’m not just saying that to make you feel better?”

There was a pause, not awkward but full of depth and meaning. “Yes,” said Thrawn. "I can tell."

“Good,” said Eli, his voice trembling, his jaw set. He raised his chin and looked back toward the family farm. “Then let’s get on that shuttle and fly straight back to the Chimaera. I never want to see them again.”

It was a hasty decision, one he didn’t fully mean and possibly wouldn’t feel comfortable with for years. It set his stomach turning, made his muscles quiver beneath his clothes. Thrawn studied him, saying nothing, not arguing with him or trying to convince him, not taking advantage of the situation, either.

“You’re sure?” he said eventually.

He would stay if Eli asked him to. He would stay the entire week, enduring anything short of murder, Eli suspected. This realization—so obvious and so uniquely Thrawn that it hardly felt like a realization at all—bloomed warmly inside him, slowly erasing the quivers just as they’d begun.

“I’m sure,” said Eli, and he found his voice steady again. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
